The Innocent Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

Garden?”
    “Unfortunately, no. I’ve always wanted to go.”
    “I go nearly every night. How about tomorrow night? It’s Tosca .”
    “I’d love to, but I am going down to stay with my parents in Folkestone tomorrow.”
    “Folkestone!”
    “Yes, d’you know it?” She thought he looked surprised—and guilty.
    “In a way—yes. I was stationed there after the war.” Pause. “At one of the Rest Camps.”
    “Oh, really? Which one?”
    “On the Leas. Number Six.”
    She said eagerly, “My parents live near there! I remember watching the rooks nesting in the chimney pots of some of the hotels. It seemed so odd somehow, and in a way comforting. Soldiers marching away down that steep hill to the docks, singing —at least they did until the end of 1917—while the rooks were contentedly cawing on the roofs! It seemed somehow to restore the balance. No, not the balance—that’s absurd—but to a small girl it gave some sort of comfort.”
    He met the look of her brown eyes seeming to glow with inner light. She had a strong chin, the lips were parted in an eager smile, a wisp of mousey-coloured hair fell over the level brow which held such eager and penetrating thoughts. At his glance the eyes lost a little of their light, the smile hesitated, as though responsive to his own thoughts of remote dereliction. She was all concern for him, tremulous to his spirit, wondering what it was that, in a moment, could quell his eagerness and enthusiasm. She suffered; she could not get near him. It had been the same in the woods; he was frank and open, she had seemed always on the point of knowing him fully—and then he was withdrawn, as though by some fear which both puzzled and hurt her.
    She noticed that he was clenching his hands, as though tightening himself against memory, and had to resist a desire to put her hand in reassurance upon his.
    “I wish I didn’t have to go home tomorrow, Phillip.”
    It was the first time she had called him by any name; and the address emboldened him to say, “May I call you Spica, after that star? Oh, let’s cut the rest of the evening here, and hare off to the opera! There’s still time. It won’t start for ten minutes. Are you game?”
    “Rather!”
    As the taxi took them down the Strand he said, “I was going to ask a question: ‘How does the golden dustman riddle his garbage and why does he call it world news?”’
    “Good for you!”
    “By the way, Spica, are you hungry?”
    “I am, rather.”
    “There’s a sandwich shop near here. Do you mind sandwiches?”
    “Of course not!”
    “An old soldier, a deserter who attached himself to me at Loos, used to work there. He had the odd name of ‘Twinkle’. It’s a place where market men go for ‘thicks’. Ham, beef, cheese—I’ll stop and get some. What would you like?”
    “Cheese, please. Any onions? They help to digest the fats.”
    “How do you know so much?”
    “I work in a laboratory at Cambridge, and hear the others talk. I look after mice, among other things. Tragic creatures. But it serves mankind, I suppose.”
    “Here we are. I won’t be a moment.”
    “May I come with you? I’d love to see ‘Twinkle’.”
    “He was shot as a deserter, I’m afraid.”
    Her eyes filled with tears. “I am sorry,” she whispered.
    “I’ll soon be back.”
    The queue under the glass roof over the north side of the Opera House in Floral Street had already gone in. So far Phillip had come here alone, and while waiting up to a couple of hours had made acquaintance with a number of regular galleryites, most of them young people of the poorer classes. Now he put down two florins at the box and leapt up the stone steps two at a time, easily leaving her behind, and meaning to surprise her by hiding round one of the corners; but she came up unexpectedly fast, and seeing him pressed against the wall held out a hand and took his, rewarding him with a little smile as though to say, I knew you would wait for me.
    Far down